Entitlement

• Sells as: the entitlement product (a product-scoped API key). This capability has no separate product-face contract — its public product route reuses the capability contract below; see the Edge route table's Product face row.

Shared consumer entitlement/paywall capability. A (user_id, content-item, mode/tier)-scoped consumer access-DECISION engine (modes hard/soft/metered/time_based/entitlement) + a per-consumer metered free-quota with period reset + a per-category gate-rule engine + the canonical tier ladder + a unified consumer subscription state machine (create/supersede/cancel/pause/resume/prorate) + windowed entitlement grants. On a gate requiring payment the charge is DELEGATED to billing-metering (/v1/charge) and its 402 is relayed — this capability never re-implements charging. Distinct from billing-metering's (organization_id, metric) B2B tenant-metering.

• Group: Commerce & revenue
• Contract: contracts/entitlement/v1/openapi.yaml
• Console: Manage the entitlement product in the console →
• Runbook: operational checklist for entitlement — internal (Vagary Labs ops; not part of this public site): docs/runbooks/capability-operations.md#entitlement
• Public base: https://api.vagarylabs.com (the consolidated API gateway — one host, per-brand sibling api.<zone>)
• Auth: a product API key (vgk_…) issued from the console — Authorization: Bearer vgk_…
• Product face (customer-keyed):
  • https://api.vagarylabs.com/product/v1/entitlement/check

Edge route table

The routes this capability actually serves on the public edge — live-synced from GET https://api.vagarylabs.com/product/v1/_meta/catalog (snapshot v1). The metric is the request-granularity billing counter; the scope is the key permission required.

Product face (customer-keyed)

Method	Path	Metric	Scope
POST	/product/v1/entitlement/check	entitlement_checks	read

Endpoints

Method	Path	Summary
POST	/v1/access/check	The consumer access decision for a content item. Resolves the effective gate mode (a category rule overrides the org default; a free item with no active rule short-circuits to grant) then dispatches on mode. Item facts (access_tier/category/published_at) and the consumer user_id are CALLER-SUPPLIED inputs (I4 — the capability never fetches platform content). Returns {has_access, reason, preview, required_tier, mode, remaining?}.
POST	/v1/view/{item_id}	Record a metered content view for a consumer (advances the metered free-quota); returns remaining
GET	/v1/remaining	The consumer's remaining free-quota this period
POST	/v1/reset-usage/{user_id}	Reset (clear) a consumer's metered usage
GET	/v1/config	The org's gate config (enabled, free_article_limit, reset_period, default_mode, time_window_hours)
PUT	/v1/config	Update the org's gate config (persistent per-org; the platform kept this in-memory)
GET	/v1/tiers	The canonical tier ladder (mechanism — order + labels; PRICES/FEATURES are domain packaging)
GET	/v1/rules	List the org's per-category gate rules
PUT	/v1/rules/{category}	Set (upsert) a per-category gate rule {mode, required_tier, enabled} — the domain override point
DELETE	/v1/rules/{category}	Remove a per-category gate rule
POST	/v1/memberships	Create (supersede-on-create) a consumer subscription — at most one active per (org, user). If a payment block is present the charge is DELEGATED to billing-metering FIRST (fail-closed — no active subscription is written unless the charge is actually COLLECTED); a billing 402/422 is relayed verbatim, and a charge that only created a hosted checkout (requires_action) is relayed as 402 with its hosted_url rather than granting access.
GET	/v1/memberships/active	The consumer's active subscription (by user_id)
DELETE	/v1/memberships/active	Cancel the consumer's active subscription
GET	/v1/memberships/{subscription_id}	A subscription by id
POST	/v1/memberships/{subscription_id}/pause	Pause an active subscription
POST	/v1/memberships/{subscription_id}/resume	Resume a paused subscription (shifts next_billing_date by the pause duration)
POST	/v1/memberships/{subscription_id}/prorate	Change a subscription's plan with proration. tier_prices is DOMAIN pricing the caller passes (the capability hardcodes no price); it computes the prorated credit/charge over the remaining billing cycle.
POST	/v1/entitlements	Grant a windowed / one-time entitlement to a consumer for an item (the entitlement-window mode). If a payment block is present the charge is DELEGATED to billing-metering FIRST (fail-closed; a billing 402 is relayed). ttl_seconds (or expires_at epoch) bounds the window; omit both for a permanent grant.
GET	/v1/entitlements/check	Whether a consumer holds an active (non-expired) entitlement for an item
POST	/internal/settlement/{rail}/{provider_charge_id}	A charge settled — grant what it bought. Called service-to-service by billing-metering when a verified provider webhook (or a capture) moves a settlement to succeeded. This is the other half of the requires_action relay on the paid paths: those refuse to grant because the customer has not paid yet, PARK what was being bought, and promise the grant happens once the rail settles. This route is that promise. Billing carries ONLY the charge identity; what a payment buys is this service's domain, and a tier or item id on a settlement row would make the money service the authority on access. Exactly-once by construction: the pending intent is claimed with a single conditional UPDATE, so a redelivered webhook grants nothing. An unknown charge and an already-granted one answer identically with granted: false and 200 — not 404, because the caller is a webhook relay that must not retry forever over a charge that was never ours.
GET	/health	Liveness + store/tenancy/billing-consume posture (never the DSN itself)
GET	/metrics	Prometheus exposition

Schemas

Error

Field	Type	Description
error	string	stable machine code (e.g. validation_error, not_found, unauthorized)
reason	string	human-readable one-line explanation (no secrets/PII)
detail	object
request_id	string

Payment

Optional payment block — when present, the charge is DELEGATED to billing-metering /v1/charge (this capability re-implements no charging). A billing failure (402/422) is relayed and the gated action is NOT applied (fail-closed).

SEGMENT ROUTING (ADR-110 D3 + its E14 addendum): supply EITHER rail OR customer_country. With a country, BILLING-METERING selects the rail — India to razorpay (Vagary Labs LLP is the seller of record), rest of world to the Dodo Merchant of Record (the MoR becomes the seller, issues its own invoice, and our tax is suppressed). Entitlement does NOT contain that map: rail choice is a tax decision owned by the money layer, and a copy here would be a second authority for one fact (payment-rail-build-vs-buy.md §3 rules 4-5). NOTE for subscriptions: neither rail supports unattended renewal from a stored card, so each period needs a fresh customer-completed checkout — call billing-metering /v1/rails/select to read unattended_renewal_supported before designing a renewal.

Field	Type	Description
rail	string	billing-metering rail (paypal
customer_country	string	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 of the CUSTOMER — forwarded to billing-metering, which selects the rail. Unrecognised/absent resolves to the Merchant-of-Record rail (the fail-safe direction).
select_rail	boolean	apply ADR-110 D3 routing with no country known (resolves to the MoR rail). Absent = false.
amount_cents	integer
currency	string
recurring	boolean
idempotency_key	string

AccessCheckRequest

Field	Type	Description
item_id	string
user_id	string	null/absent = anonymous consumer
access_tier	string	the item's required tier (caller-supplied, I4)
category	string	selects a per-category gate rule if one exists
published_at	number	epoch seconds (time_based mode input)
mode	string	optional per-request mode override

AccessDecision

Field	Type	Description
has_access	boolean
reason	string	machine reason (free_content
preview	boolean	may a preview be shown on denial
required_tier	string
mode	string
remaining	integer	metered mode only — free views left after this one
organization_id	string
item_id	string

ViewRequest

Field	Type	Description
user_id	string

Remaining

Field	Type	Description
user_id	string
limit	integer
used	integer
remaining	integer
reset_period	string

GateConfig

Field	Type	Description
organization_id	string
enabled	boolean
free_article_limit	integer
reset_period	string
default_mode	string
time_window_hours	integer

RuleCreate

Field	Type	Description
mode	string
required_tier	string
enabled	boolean

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Generated by scripts/gen-capability-docs.py from contracts/entitlement/v1/openapi.yaml — the contract IS the source of truth; edit the contract, not this page. The Edge route table section is synced from the live edge catalog snapshot (v1) — re-sync with python3 scripts/sync-edge-catalog.py.